Sorry for the delay. :) Chapter 14 yeaaii! :D Oh and I hope you like the cover I made. I'm still trying different styles and techniques. I don't do well with colors and texture, but I did my best and I guess the outcome is...acceptable considering it is my second work :P Oh well, enough blabbering and on with the chapter. :) Enjoy! :D
"Link!" I yelled as soon as the door hit the wall, but soon that yell turned into an echo and my voice into a locked box. My eyes wide with disbelief and astonishment. Nothing could have prepared me for what laid before me. I tried to talk yet my voice wouldn't appear. I tried to move but nothing, not even a twitch. It seemed as if my entire being had just simply turned to stone. I couldn't move although my legs tried. I couldn't talk although my voice wished to be heard and my mind screamed and screamed his name, over and over again. I couldn't breathe although my lungs demanded air desperately. My world, my mere existence reduced itself to that voice inside of me, to my very soul that yearned to find that person who I had so cruelly treated. "Link..." I finally managed to free a tiny sound that resembled that of a dying nightingale. "Link..." I succeded once more with the same or even a greater difficulty I had with the first one. My throat felt scratchy and sore. "Please..." I said to no one in particular and nothing in particular. I just wished to be heard by anyone that could be there. I needed someone to confide in and be comforted by, for what was before me had just scarred me for life. In fact, I guess I spoke not to an actual person, but to an omnipresent and omnipotent being. I was begging to that being for this to be a gruesome game of my own imagination and not the cruel reality that had so harshly slapped me. In the window at the wall before me, against the light of a sinking sun, could be read in angry red letters...angry and bloody red letters: Strife...where are you? My sight blurred when I noticed that among the letters there were red silhouettes. Not only there, but along the wall...handprints and fingerprints, nail scratches, all a vile and macabre artwork of reddish blood. Nausea hit me and my legs went weak, falling on my knees as my strength abandoned me. Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link...my mind screamed over and over again, as if such an act could make my worst fears and deepest terrors melt away. He was the only thing that existed in me, his name and face the only things my mind could conjure up. My breathing got erratic and my body began to shiver uncontrollably. What have I done? What have I done? What should I have done? Why? Why? I questioned myself mercilessly. My eyes never leaving the reddish reminder of a friend I should've taken better care of. But what made me out of the blue brake into uncontrollable sobbing was the moment my memory reproduced perfectly, with the voice I was bound to never hear again, the bloody sentence left for me..."Strife...where are you?"
"Link!" I sobbed unashamed and loudly. "Link!" Maybe, I thought, if I screamed to the world my sorrows...the burden would lighten. But, how wrong I was. My own broken voice made my pain deeper and my sadness even more present than before. My hand tried to reach for that one window that was the only thing left for me by him. Yet, my hand fell loudly against the wooden floor when a powerful wave of tears hit me and my sobbing even got louder. I looked and looked about me, but the longer I stared the longer the vision before me became clearer and at the same time blurrier. "LINK! UGH! LINK! LI...ARGH!" The room was a mess. The furniture broken and turned, the pillow's feathers were scattered here and about and some stuck to the bloody puddles that littered the floor and walls. The drawers were thrown with the clothing in heaps and hanging from other wooden structures. The bedsheets were torn and bloody as well as the curtains. The wallpaper was slashed and scratched and unglued from some walls. Everywhere I turned my eyes to, all I could see was destruction. Yet, out of the corner of my eye there was something I had yet to analyze: an ajar door. Blinded by my tears I had almost missed it, but now it was quite clear and focused. What I managed to see behind such door appeared to be the bathroom. It seemed to be dirty and unkept, the type of bathroom you don't even wish to peek into. Link...how could you have lived like this? "Link..." I whispered, the previous wailing now a tiny cry. "Link...hic..." I tried to stand. At the beginning I found myself falling quite a few times upon my bruised and battered knees. Drowning in loathing and sadness, I couldn't help but fall various times. But, my curiosity got the better of me and after a while I had managed to walk halfway towards the bathroom with little to no falls. Something inside of me, believed there was more than a simple toilet and a showerhead. Something screamed inside of me that I had to gaze inside that filthy room. With silent sobs and a shattered heart, I found myself before the door. And with a tiny push the door swung open. I gasped and fainted.
For a moment I floated. Floated and floated. Like a leaf in the wind I swayed. I swayed and swayed. But then the wind got strong. It blew and blew. And then I fell towards the ground. I fell and fell. The hit was strong and hard. It hurt. It hurt more than anything. Is just that the wind, although a refreshing and sweet breath, had suffocated me with its blades.
I woke up so swiftly that someone may have thought they had bathed me in cold water. Shaking and trembling, my teeth clattered loudly and freezing sweat rolled down my face and body. What the hell had I been dreaming of? In fact...when did I fall asleep?
"Welcome back to the world of the living Strife." A voice called. A voice that brought back nice and warming memories, yet at the same time tragic and macabre ones. A voice I had thought I would never hear again. A voice that for two weeks had ignored me and now spoke to me as if nothing. A voice of a friend who, before being a friend, had been the person I despised and abhorred the most. The voice of someone who I could never live without for I would feel incomplete in a way.
"Link..." I gasped and stared. What I saw made the air catch in my throat. "Link what..."
"Here. It'll help." He gave me a mug filled with exquisite hot chocolate, this action making me forget for a moment what I was about to ask. I drank greedily from the cup, my cold and shivering body recovering its strength and vigor with every gulp. The warmth of the chocolate, like a haze, spread through my body, melting away my fears and problems, making me feel light and a tiny bit drowsy. I could hardly care that I was probably burning my tongue and throat, I needed to feel something in me, and the warm beverage was almost enough to destroy that vacant and freezing space. Once I gave the last sip, I returned the mug to Link and fell on the bed, cuddling in the blankets like a kitten would. Sighing and happy, I waited for my friend to return from wherever he went. I closed my eyes, wondering when did I end on the bed and preparing myself for the questions I yet had to ask. I closed my eyes and not even a second later did I feel the dipping of the matress, the added weight making it creek a bit. I took a deep breath and faced Link who watched me with his ice cold eye.
"Link.." I began and touched his shoulder.
"Where were you Strife?" He hissed and sat up menacingly.
"Wha..."
"Where. were. you. Strife?" He asked again and took my arm, pulling me to eye-level.
"Link...let go." I tried to shake away his hand, but he just held me stronger.
"Where were you?!" He yelled and pushed me away. My head collided painfully with the wall. I groaned, but he hardly cared. He just got up and began pacing angrily. His hands messing and pulling at his golden locks. Dizzily I pushed myself up and backed away slowly towards the wall. Trying to put as much distance as I could between him and I. What was happening?
"Where were you?!" He yelled once more and fulminated me with his eye, his hands still pulling painfully at his hair that I swore he was about to tear a piece of his scalp off. But what put me on edge, was the look he was giving me. His blue eye held anger, madness, despair, sorrow, a bundle of emotions that were drowning me, that were suffocating me and making me tremble with fright.
"Link you are scaring me. What are..."
"YOU NEVER CAME!" He yelled and smashed the only untouched lamp, the glass scattering everywhere. I flinched and tried to push myself even closer to the wall. "YOU NEVER CAME! YOU NEVER DID!" He cried and fell on his knees, the broken glass embedding on his flesh. I remained paralyzed on the spot. Trying to ascertain whether I would come out of this unharmed. Something wasn't right. Something wasn't right with Link. And I feared that if I tried anything I would end up like the lamp. He seemed...mad, a loony. When did I have to come to him? He never called, therefore I never came. Why did he think I should have even come? And how did I not coming caused all of this destruction? I had nothing to do with him. I barely knew him! We were nothing more than partners and perhaps...acquaintances...barely even friends. Why was it my fault? Could it be my fault? Was I the cause everything looked like a raid? Was it my fault that Link was...
"You never came..." He sobbed. "Why?...Why didn't you?" His voice was filled with such desolation and depression that I felt sapped. "Why didn't you come when I most needed you?!"
"I didn't know where you lived!" I defended myself and crept a bit closer to him. He seemed pretty sane and approachable right now. "But...Link..." I was sitting at the border of the bed and observing the man before me. Cuts and bruises covered his arms and back, bruises going from black to yellow littered everywhere the eye could land, his face had...God...had multiple slashes and nail scratches. But what worried me the most was the pinkish tint his skin had, was because of blood. "How could I find you..." I moved my hand to place it upon his shoulder in a comforting manner, but he suddenly faced me with that ice-cold eye even colder. A typhoon of negativeness twirling inside of that blue pool.
"THAT DOESN'T MATTER! NOTHING MATTERS!" He yelled and pushed me over the bed, my head once more hitting roughly against the wall. My world spun for a moment, a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes before my eyes. I groaned and felt a weight on me. Something moved, but I was too out of it to know what it was. I just felt something touch both sides of my face and body.
"Wha..." I slurred, my world slowly returning to normal.
"Nothing matters." For a moment, a wet and warm object touched my cheek. I froze. That wasn't normal. Something wasn't right. "Nothing..." The wet and slippery object traced my jaw ever so slowly. "Nothing..." It moved along my chin and cheek leaving a wet trail that felt cold against the air. "Nothing..." Then it came unto my lips. It moved framing the upper lip and then the bottom lip. Swiping and flowing along the ridges and the thin line that separated them. Slippery. Warm. Wet. My senses hit me and I gasped scared. Knowing the precarious position I was in, I squirmed and twisted trying to break the lock Link had on me. My mind conjured the possible outcomes of the situation; the fear growing and growing and making me shiver and for small droplets of cold sweat to leak from my forehead. I was terrified. No. Link. Please. No. Link, please. Link settled his weight completely over my body, his chest on mine, his hips on mine, his legs on either side of mine. No...Link...Please...Oh God... I closed my eyes. I didn't want to watch. I didn't want to see anymore. Link's tongue licked the edge of my left eye. "Nothing...Strife..." I gasped when one of his legs parted mine. My eyes flew open and I looked at his ice cold eye. It was dull. It was emotionless. It was frozen cold.
"Nothing matters..." He said and my eyes observed how the wind from the ceiling fan made his bangs move, discovering that very eye that always remained hidden by his golden strands. The late afternoon sunlight that managed to stream through, illuminated that other ice cold blue eye whose pupil was located in the inferior part of the blue ocean of his...his blue ocean that had been bloodstained. "Nothing matter anymore..." We stared at each other, the fear tangible in gaze, the terror emanating from all of my body. His face filled with scratches, his golden mane tainted by the blood, his ice cold blue eyes...those were the last things I saw. That and that pearly white and sadistic smile on his lips were the last moments before my world became black. He looked like a fallen angel against the remaining rays of sun that poured through his window. His face was inches away from mine.
"Link..." I knew no more.